Turkey’s Edirne aims to draw 10 million tourists in 2022

EDİRNE

The northwestern province of Edirne, which borders Greece and Bulgaria, expects to host 10 million tourists in 2022.

The Edirne Promoting and Tourism Association (ETTDER), a non-governmental organization established in the province in 1962, has already started preparations to double the number of tourists visiting the province in 2022.

“Before the pandemic, the city normally hosted 5 million tourists a year,” Bülent Bacıoğlu, the head of ETTDER, told state-run Anadolu Agency on April 17.

The pandemic has brought tourism across the world to its knees, with Edirne and other Turkish cities struggling similarly. It aims to lure this number of tourists in 2022, when travel is expected, and hoped, to become easier.

2022 also marks Edirne’s 100th anniversary of victory against Greek forces in Thrace, as its number plate number is also coincidentally 22.

ETTDER has listed some 22 promotion topics, including introducing sites on its border, its rivers, as well as ancient and Ottoman remains.

“The city has a high historical, cultural and natural beauty tourism potential,” noted Bacıoğlu.

“I think we will enter the new year with a high tourism performance,” he said, referring to hopes that COVID-19 will be curtailed by then with a majority of the population to be vaccinated.

To this day, Edirne, once a capital city of the Ottoman Empire, carries traces of the Ottomans, Byzantines, Romans and the Thracians.